“40 Over, What To Do!?”

Hey guys, this is my first post here, and first ticket aswell. I'm 19, and getting pulled over for "48 over reduced to 40". Anyways that's not the point. The point is, when the officer gave me the ticket, she told me that it was originally 148, but she reduced it to 140, mind you I was driving in a 100km/h highway. She told me herself that since I'm still young, I should take it to court to reduce the penalties and try avoiding raised insurance premiums. It might also be of some help to add the fact that I was convicted on Sept 29, which means they're all trying to meet their monthly quotas since I've seen literally 6 cops within the hour pulling people over.

The questions are:

1. If I take this to court, what should I do? I will obviously higher someone specializing in this to defend me, however, since she advised me to challenge the ticket, will she appear in court? Since she pulled me, and a bunch of people over due to procrastination anyway, I would expect that she is a slacker.

2. I don't really care about the demerit points, but what do I have to get it reduced to so that my insurance isn't really impacted? (this will be a pain in the ass since I'm on my parents secondary). I understand that it's the convictions that affect the insurance, but I mean what do I have to get my convictions reduced to so that insurance will consider it no big deal.

That's all I'm stressing over atm, so thanks for your help in advance guys.

FooBo wrote:

1. If I take this to court, what should I do? I will obviously higher someone specializing in this to defend me, however, since she advised me to challenge the ticket, will she appear in court? Since she pulled me, and a bunch of people over due to procrastination anyway, I would expect that she is a slacker.

The first order of business in my mind is that your tone is completely disrespectful to law enforcement. You would expect she is a slacker based on the fact that she was conducting enforcement? Please. You're 19, perhaps it's time to grow up a wee bit? You know nothing of how law enforcement or any police service operates and therefore you're in no position to accuse officers of conducting enforcement to keep up with their 'monthly quotas'.

To answer your question, will she appear in court? Who knows. She is required to show up by her policing agency, but unforeseen circumstances come up all the time. Perhaps that day she'll be sick, or be required in a different court, or will be tied up at a radio call, or this or that. Officers will generally show up to a) not have their tickets thrown out the window, and/or b) to collect the off duty court pay.

Considering you're hiring a paralegal to represent you, your appearance in court isn't mandatory. Your representative will do whatever he/she can to get you the best deal.

FooBo wrote:

2. I don't really care about the demerit points, but what do I have to get it reduced to so that my insurance isn't really impacted? (this will be a pain in the ass since I'm on my <span class="IL_AD" id="IL_AD11">parents</span> secondary). I understand that it's the convictions that affect the insurance, but I mean what do I have to get my convictions reduced to so that insurance will consider it no big deal.

It's the number of convictions that insurance companies are generally concerned about. They don't think 'oh well he has been convicted for six tickets but none of them are a 'big deal' so who cares'. Several 'no big deal' tickets (to use your terminology) is a lot more damaging than one 'medium big deal' tickets (like a disobey stop sign).

1) As the above poster somewhat said, your understanding of police and quotas and how they work is more myth then fact. Police are required to appear in Court, and not doing so is neglect of duty. Barring some type of emergency or other conflict, expect them to attend. Its also unlikely in my opinion youll get much, if any reduction on a ticket that already has been lowered.

2) Contact your insurance provider to find out what kind of impact any given charge will have. Speeding seems to vary from one provider to the next, with each company having a different cutoff between what they consider a minor or major offence. Ive heard some apparently consider 35+ over a major offence, others 50+. Minor offence is less likely to cause an increase, a major offence is pretty much guaranteed to.

Thanks for the replies, I am not trying to be disrespectful, however when she said I was going 148, I highly doubt that because I was following traffic, not as to say that is necessarily a good thing, just that would mean 5 other people were going 148 as well.

But I digress, it's just time to wait and see what happens.